


abject permanence

by EtherDragons



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Amputee Georgie Denbrough, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Friendship, Big Emphasis on 'Disaster', Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak Are Best Friends, Demisexual Eddie Kaspbrak, Eventual Smut, Florist Richie, Gay Disaster Richie Tozier, Implied/Referenced Car Accident, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Nonbinary Stanley Uris, Slow Burn, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Strangers to Lovers, Tattoo Artist Eddie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25787821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherDragons/pseuds/EtherDragons
Summary: abject/abˌjekt/—(of something bad) experienced or present to the maximum degree. Referent to a state ofabjectionabjection —to be cast off, to exist somewhere between the concept of anobjectand asubject, representing taboo elements of the self barely separated off in a liminal space. Within the boundaries of what one defines assubject– a part of oneself – andobject– something that exists independently of oneself – there resides pieces that were once categorized as a part of oneself or one's identity that has since been rejected – theabject.Often used in social theory to describe the state of oft-marginalized groups. Studies have examined and demonstrated the manner in which people adopt roles, identities and discourses to avoid the consequences of social and organizational abjection. In art, it is defined as that which explore themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety, particularly referencing the body and bodily functions.abject permanence —the notion that rejection and transgression persists, even when you're not looking.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh/Kay McCall, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	1. lavender roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enchantment. Love at first sight. Wonder, impossibility, touched by magic.

Eddie Kaspbrak, despite his best efforts, is a creature of habits.

He wakes up every day at seven am sharp, has his first cup of coffee fifteen minutes afterwards, then breakfast to go with his morning meds, and goes downstairs to his studio to spend the next hour meticulously checking and cleaning his tools even though he has not, and would never, leave them dirty before closing. He has another cup of coffee once he’s done, and by then Bill and Georgie are already up so they sit down by the front desk to go over the day’s schedule.

After that, it’s either nine or close enough to it. Eddie takes his travel mug, filled to the brim with the morning’s third and last coffee, a sketchbook, and his favorite mechanical pencil, ready to go out to the nearby flower shop manned by a nice elderly lady he _adores_ , stays there until his first appointment. Afternoons depend on his clients, but once eight pm rolls around he and the Denbroughs close down their parlor, clean up, and go back up for dinner. Eddie’s in bed at ten, and except for the rare days where they don’t open, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

There’s nothing wrong with having a routine, he tells himself (and Bill). Eddie just likes being organized, and feeling like he’s doing the most he can out of any given day, it’s perfectly _normal_ , and he’s just _fine_.

Except when his routine is broken. Then he is very much not fine.

It’s been two weeks since the flower shop closed down for the entire day, and it hasn’t been open since. Two weeks of Eddie walking around the corner and down the block and being met with shuttered out windows, two weeks of going back to the parlor with an empty sketchbook and itching fingers, of going to sleep with dread coiling in the pit of his stomach.

Georgie and Ben had teamed up at some point around the six day mark to send him location pins and photos from other florists around their street, but the thought of having to make enough small talk with a new person just so they’ll let him loiter around their business makes Eddie feel like crawling out of his skin. On the 10th day, Bill bought the _largest_ fucking floral arrangement he had even seen in his life, dropped it off in his bedroom with not a single word, and Eddie proceeded to have a meltdown about pollen allergies — despite knowing perfectly well he _does not_ have any —, for a solid half an hour before Georgie took pity on him and hid the whole thing in _his_ bedroom.

On the morning of the 15th day, Eddie is starting to resign himself to the fact that the shop will not open again. He should probably give one of the other ones a shot, if only to stop his slow descent into madness.

He doesn’t do that. At ten in the morning he’s walking out of _Paper Boats Ink_ , with his travel mug, his sketchbook, and the last scraps of hope he mustered for his former routine, going off the familiar path.

The flower shop is a tiny hole-in-the-wall thing, all exposed brick and two tall windows besides a small wooden door. Evergreens spill from their suspended vases, giving the impression they were growing out of the brick wall itself, obscuring the arrangements usually on display inside but that never seemed to stop people from getting interested in them.

Eddie’s heart honest to God skips a beat when he spots the little chalkboard display propped up by the shop’s wall, stopping in his tracks for a moment before breaking into a deeply relieved jog to the door.

If he had stopped for even a moment to consider that the loopy chalk handwriting telling passersby the shop’s name is not the same he got used to seeing for the past three years, but he doesn’t. Eddie pushes inside, breathes in the cloying, honey-sweet air and his entire body relaxes amidst the organized chaos of colors and shapes of the flowers and assorted plants.

He shifts his sketchbook under his arm to brush careful fingers against the petals of the nearest flowers — a pretty little bouquet of lavender roses, heavy and fat and silk soft under his touch —, drinks in the sights and the scents as he makes his way towards the counter and his seat besides it.

Except it’s not there.

This is his second clue that something is awry, but Eddie doesn’t heed to it. He frowns at the space where his stool should have been as if it would make it appear out of thin air, and when that doesn’t work, puts his mug down on the counter and walks around the back to see if it’s been tucked underneath for some reason. It hasn’t.

Unsettled, Eddie straightens up and stares at the door to the back, debating with himself if he’s at a level with the elderly owners to waltz in for his stool or if he should knock.

The choice is taken away from him when the door swings open.

* * *

“I’m gonna get this out front,” Richie calls out, blinded by the behemoth of a bouquet in his arms.

Somewhere behind him, Bev hums. “Need me to get the door?”

“Nah,” he doesn’t need to see to walk around, not here. “Get the last of the boxes down, would ya? If we get this done before lunch, it’s on me.” In response, she huffs out, “alright, _boss_ ,” then something else Richie doesn’t catch because he’s too busy laughing.

Being back here brings out something in Richie that he’d been sorely missing. Not only back to the city, although he had welcomed the switch back from the hard lights and harder people of LA he thinks he’d never get used to, but to the shop itself.

Every corner of it brings back memories — of being young and stupider, flying down busy streets after school to come help his parents with deliveries, the basket of his bike overflowing with flowers delicately wrapped in brown paper and twine, his only worries being the scrapes on his fingertips from handling thorny stems too carelessly, the permanent bruises on his knees, and being back in time for dinner. Of being a bit older, a bit more involved, before he was off to what he thought would be bigger and better things.

They _weren’t_ , but that doesn’t matter anymore.

Maybe it’s having _something_ to occupy his hands and mind with, or maybe it’s some age-regression bullshit that comes with the territory of being under a roof that is very much permeated with his parents’ ‘energy’ or whatever, but Richie feels positively weightless as he walks from the greenhouse to the front, whistling a random tune under his breath.

He kicks the door open, hitting something on the other side with a loud _thud_. Richie freezes up, because the _something_ staggers back and crashes into the counter, yelping, so it’s… probably not a vase he forgot to clear out of the way. He hurries to set the flowers down, an apology tangled on the tip of his tongue alongside a very pointed question to whomever it is about why exactly they were lurking back here, all swallowed down when Richie gets a good look at them.

The man currently cussing up a storm under his breath while cradling his nose is… setting Richie’s blood on fire, to say the least. He’s sure his eyes must be the size of saucers as he unabashedly takes the stranger in, from his impossibly soft-looking hair down to the impressive black cloud-like patterns inked high on one of his arms and disappearing under the cuff of his polo shirt, deep black ink covering most of his forearm before shattering in glass-like shards over his elbow, intricate clockworks on the other, geometrical lines sharpening the lines of his other shoulder. The man fixes Richie with _giant_ brown eyes, and his knees feel like they’re a whisper away from giving out completely.

The man says something. Richie could not tell what to save his own life, brain doing loops around the fact a perfect incarnation of every single daydream he’s ever had since puberty is standing in front of him, shoulders squared and mouth pressed in a knife-edge thin line, arms crossed in front of his chest. Richie’s eyes drift down, following the intricate lines of his tattoos, mouth dry.

He speaks again, nearly shouting, "where's Maggie?"

By virtue of sheer volume, the words manage to cut through the vaguely horny fog in Richie's brain but it still takes him a full minute to process them.

"Uh," _what's a Maggie_ , he thinks deliriously, then remembers that it's his _mother's name_ , shakes his head to try and clear it out, "she's… not here."

That doesn't seem to be the answer he was looking for, because the little crease between his eyebrows deepens. Richie kinda wants to reach out and smooth it down with his thumb, digs his hands into the sides of his thighs instead.

"Who are you?" He presses, louder still, stepping forward like he’s just about ready to fight Richie, who goes into the fritz again because he maybe wouldn’t be all that opposed to this short, gorgeous stranger putting him in a headlock. Or something. “What are you _doing_ here? If you think you can waltz in here and fuck off with these you got another thing coming because I am _not_ afraid of calling the cops—”

Richie snaps fully out of his reverie then, both hands raised. “Wait, wait — look, I’m, uh, Richie. Richie Tozier. Mags — my ma decided she wanted to retire? Shop’s mine now,” the stranger’s vicious look melts into something like confusion, then realization. Richie _almost_ gets caught up in how fucking expressive his giant eyes are, keeps going anyway. He might have time for it _after_ he proves he’s not here to rob himself blind. “I have — all the paperwork? Uh, and who are...”

In the same beat Richie turns to dig through the drawer under the cash registers for the ownership papers, the stranger turns and runs off. He knocks right into a succulent display Bev spent the better part of the morning setting up, sending the little potted plants to the floor in a flurry of broken ceramic and dirt, but he doesn’t stop. He curses, loudly, and keeps going like his ass is on fire (Richie does not look. It’s less of a conscious choice and more that he can’t physically turn his head that fast), through the door and disappearing out on the street.

“What the fuck,” Richie mumbles.

He runs a hand through his hair, leaning into the counter with the other one, not sure if he should run after the guy or if this entire exchange was somehow a figment of his imagination.

* * *

A reasonable person would, in this situation, apologise. Maybe laugh a little, explain their thought process and maybe try to get to a point where they could just ask if they and their arrangement with the previous owner had been mentioned, if it could possibly resume, and hope this embarrassment would be forgotten. Reasonable people perhaps wouldn’t even have to get to the point where all of this was necessary, but the point that stands is: Eddie is anything but reasonable.

Which is why he’s currently doing a five-minute walk in one, not slowing down a beat when he gets through the doors into his parlor — despite nearly scaring the shit out of a customer Georgie had by the front desk. Eddie rushes down the corridor, forgoing his own studio area in favor of unceremoniously crashing into the next room over, promptly throwing himself on the wall, and sliding down to the floor with his head between his knees. 

It’s either a testament to Bill’s training or to how used he is to Eddie’s erratic behavior that he doesn’t flinch at the ruckus, hands and eyes steady on his work. Ben’s similarly nonplussed, which makes Eddie feel at least a little better — he would not forgive himself if his inability to act like a human person inadvertently ruined someone’s body.

“Breathe,” Ben prompts gently from his seat, voice rising above the loud buzzing of his tattoo gun.

Eddie had not realized he was hyperventilating. He presses a shaking hand to the middle of his chest while Ben continues speaking, counting rather, above the familiar white noise, breathes alongside his voice — five, seven, eight, repeat.

It helps. Bill not dropping his work to fuss over him, Ben’s steady voice, the constant thrumming of the machine, the aseptic smell of the studio, it all helps dull the straight-razor edge of his anxiety enough that Eddie can straighten up without feeling like he’s one stiff breeze away from passing the fuck out, blinking his eyes open when Bill turns off the motor and moves from this chair to sit down on the floor besides him.

Bill bumps their shoulders together, gently. “Still c...c-closed?”

Eddie shakes his head, lets it fall on top of Bill’s with a groan. Ben gets up from his chair too, the plastic covering sticking to his bare chest with a sound that makes Eddie grind his teeth. He doesn’t move closer, for which Eddie is grateful — one person in close vicinity is already Too Much for him generally — but he watches them both while wrapping his newly retouched arm in saran wrap.

“What’s wrong, then?” Bill mutters.

He breathes in. Breathes out — his voice comes out like word vomit, fast and maybe a little garbled together, stumbling over themselves because Eddie does not want to recount the frankly mortifying exchange he’s just had any longer than absolutely necessary.

Bill, bless his fucking heart, is used to him. He wouldn’t have survived being Eddie’s friend for nearly twenty years if he weren’t, hell, would barely put up with living and working with him if that weren’t the case, and while Ben is trying very hard and failing to follow his aggressive storytelling, Bill’s just nodding along. Eddie only cuts himself off when he runs out of breath, dropping his head between his knees again.

“Well,” Bill chews on the word, patting Eddie’s shoulder. “At least… you know it’s not c-closed forever?”

Eddie groans, long and suffering. “But I can’t _go back there_!”

“Because of what happened, or b...b-ecause it’s not the same owner?”

“What difference does it make?! I can’t.”

“All the d-difference,” Bill hums, “if it’s the second one, then I know you’re g...g-going to go and find someplace else tomorrow to go to, if it’s the first I’m gonna have to kick you out,” at Eddie’s offended gasp he continues, “Eddie. Man. I love you. You’re the neurotic little brother I never had. B-but these past weeks were _hell_.”

Eddie makes a dejected noise from the back of his throat, burrowing his head further between his knees. 

“I can go with if you want to look out the other shops?” Ben offers, pulling Bill’s chair closer to sit down. “I don’t have any appointments tomorrow, you can push yours forwards, we’ll make a day out of it.”

“Or you could g-go back and apologise,” Bill’s offer is a lot less gentle than Ben’s, with him nudging at Eddie’s shoulder again. “Either way, you should do something. It’s fucking you up for real, and you know that.”

With a huff, Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose without raising his head. He does know. It’s fucking him up, and threatening to fuck with his work, which he could absolutely not let happen. He needs to get his shit together, make a choice on what to — preferably within the next hour and a half, coming around to the latter point.

The choice is unceremoniously ripped from his hands when a knock on the door comes.

“Hey, Eddie?” Georgie pokes his head in through it. “There’s a guy out here asking for you, I think? He’s got a Carnation apron on,” Eddie raises his head then. He’s not sure what kind of face he’s making, but it makes Georgie cough out a laugh, leaning further into his cane. “I can tell ‘im to fuck off if you want?”

All three of them are now looking at him to see what he’s going to do, and Eddie feels distinctly like crawling out of his skin.

There’s no way the guy isn’t the new owner — Richie, Eddie reminds himself — because the flower shop has been criminally understaffed since long before he started going there. Why the fuck he’d be coming here is a mystery. Maybe he called Maggie to ask why a random idiot came in shouting on her behalf and she passed on whatever information one gives about ‘regulars’, if he can be called one without having ever actually purchased anything from her, and now he’s looking to make amends and not lose his… patronage, or whatever.

Either that, or he’s here to charge Eddie for the display he fucking broke, like an moron.

Anyway, he can be an adult about this. He can get up from the floor and face this man, and apologise. And pay for the succulents. And see if he’ll have to take Ben up on his offer or not, but that’s thankfully an issue for Tomorrow Eddie.

He shakes his head, rubs a hand over his face. “No. No, it’s — I’ll be right out.”

Georgie looks at him a little longer, nods. “A’ight, man,” he closes the door when he leaves.

Ben gets up, pulling his shirt back on. “Want us there?”

Eddie is already pushing himself up on his feet, shakes his head again. He can do this. He can be a normal human person, he can talk to this new guy. He walks with purpose to the door, throws it open—

—and stops. His hands are shaking. If they’re still or again, he’s not entirely sure.

“Yeah,” his voice wobbles, and he hates it, so he clears his throat and tries again, “yes, please,” with middling success, stepping out in the corridor.

With Ben and Bill at his heel, Eddie walks out into the front room, acutely aware of the fact there are already clients waiting for their appointments sitting on the chairs near the desk, even more aware of the florist awkwardly standing in the middle of the room. Now that he's no longer otherwise occupied, Eddie can take a good look at him. 

It's really a wonder he hadn't realized Richie is related to Maggie. They have the same clear, piercing blue eyes, Richie's magnified by his glasses' thick lenses, the same dark brown curls, the same square face. _The resemblance is uncanny_ — he thinks, then immediately feels like punching himself in the face because _of course it is, they're fucking **related**_. The only dissimilar thing is the clothes under the store apron. Eddie squints at the garish, eye-searing Hawaiian pattern of his shirt. 

Their eyes meet. Eddie sees Richie swallow, Adam's apple bobbing like he's nervous ( _maybe because you threatened to call the police on him, stupid_ ), eyes moving from his face to the pair behind him, then back. He raises a hand in a little two-fingered wave, holding a little cyan pot full of white tulips on the other hand, and on this one he's got — oh. 

"Is that…"

Richie looks down at the travel mug, with _Kaspbrak_ written neatly on the front in permanent marker. "Yeah! I'm, uh, assuming it's yours? I don't know your surname or anything, but you're the only one who came in today," he holds it out. 

Eddie fights the urge to look back — he does not need reassurance that it’s okay to get his own shit from a stranger, thank you very much —, reaches out and snatches it from Richie’s hand like he’s going to get burned if he takes any longer than absolutely necessary. Richie blinks owlishly at him, tosses the pot carelessly from one hand to the other. 

A moment passes, and Eddie realizes he should maybe say something. He tries, even opens his mouth, valiantly ignoring the need to look behind him to maybe beg Bill or Ben or Georgie for an out that’s biting at the back of his neck vicious like a rabid dog. He grabs a hold of his own voice, sets his shoulders, because he can do this. He can apologise, or at least thank the man for being kind enough to think of returning his, frankly too expensive, travel mug. He _can_ do this.

“What are those for?”

He can’t.

Eddie’s voice does not want to make out those words, instead he jabs a finger in the air in the direction of the potted flowers, and snaps his mouth shut, mortified. He’s one heartbeat away from running upstairs to hide under his bed for the next year when Richie stops staring at him, and throws his head back — laughing. Roaring with it, almost. As if Eddie had just told him the best fucking joke he’d ever heard. Eddie feels his face heat up all the way down to his neck.

“Ha— these?” Richie chokes out, still chuckling. He tosses the vase back to his other hand, thrusts it forwards. “They’re tulips. For you, since you, hm. Couldn’t get your sketching done? Ma told me about you, tiny little artist who doesn’t buy shit, but she likes you so,” he shrugs, nonchalant, “guess I gotta make sure you keep coming. Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

Eddie blinks.

Richie’s face falls a little. He shifts his weight. “Hm, uh. It’s — it’s fine if you don’t want them? I didn’t know what kind you liked.”

Eddie snatches the tulips as the man begins to pull them back, holds the pot to his chest as if Richie would change his mind, take them back. He's not sure why he does it. He doesn't even like flowers in his actual work _or_ living space.

Richie looks from Eddie to his own empty hands, back and forth. Eddie thinks he hears Georgie laughing by the table.

"Thank you," he finally grits out. It's not much of a victory because he's fairly sure his face is stuck in some expression between contrite and constipated, and he's looking very pointedly at the tulips instead of Richie, "for them. And my mug. And… sorry I threatened to call the police on you."

"And the succulents," Bill stage-whispers behind him. Eddie wants to put his head through the wall. 

"And the succulents. That I destroyed. I'll pay for that, and — and these."

Richie snorts, loud and sudden enough that Eddie's eyes snap back to his face. "No worries, man. Honestly, you're not the first person to threaten me with the cops, ain't gonna be the last."

Eddie wonders if that was a joke. He frowns at the florist, and yet again his mouth decides that it is too good to wait for his brain to catch up to it.

"For your crimes against fashion, I assume?" 

For a moment, there's only stunned silence. 

Then Richie is laughing again, choking through it like it'd caught him by surprise. Georgie is definitely losing his shit on the front desk now. 

Richie is heaving through breaths, pushing his glasses up to wipe under an eye. "Man, I can see why ma likes you. You're a fucking riot," before Eddie can fully process that, he keeps going. 

"Fuck, I'd love to stick around so you can roast me a bit more, but I gotta get back to work. I’ll see you tomorrow…?”

A pause. Eddie doesn't know what the hell is happening anymore, but he can at least understand a prompting tone when he hears one. Small blessings. 

“Eddie.”

Richie smiles. His teeth are crooked, the top ones poking too far off the bottom. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Eddie? I’m gonna put your chair out an’ everything.”

Eddie swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow.”

That seems to please him, because his smile widens — one of his eyes scrunch up more than the other. Richie waves at them again, turns around and skips right out of the parlor.

Eddie looks down at the flowers, turns to the corridor, shoulders past an amused Bill and a very confused Ben, walks over and promptly locks himself in his studio to scream into his hands.

The tulips sit on a table on the corner until they start to wilt, a week after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy, oh boy, uh. this is my first actual foray into writing for the clowntown so. roast me in the comments but like gently please.


	2. green dahlia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fresh start, significant changes.

Richie can barely shut the door behind him before Beverly descends on him, hands around his arm and fingers digging in like he might bolt if she doesn't hold on. All things considered, she's not _wrong_ on that.

“So?!” Bev shakes him, her smile all teeth.

Like this, she reminds him vaguely of sharks — there's blood in the water, and she's going to follow the scent to clamp her teeth down on whatever it is that's bleeding out. Richie shuffles, as if that could throw her off his trail, or rather convince her that there's nothing to follow in the first place.

"So what?" His voice sounds blessedly even. He'd have to convince _himself_ , but that's an issue for later.

"Come _on_ ," Bev fixes him a hard look, fingers digging further into the meat of Richie's arm. The _Jaws_ theme song plays faintly on the back of his head. "How'd it go with hot tattoo guy?"

Richie shuffles forward, scratching at his warming neck. "I don't know why you keep assuming he's hot. You didn't even _see_ him."

Her smile widens. “Yeah but I _know_ you, Trashmouth,” he groans, “ _you_ don’t just erase stuff Mags tells you unless you get dragged down the gutter, and you only get there if some good lookin’ piece comes strutting about.”

“That’s unprofessional,” Richie tries to shake her off, but all he gets is Bev hanging on tighter, “I ought to fire you.”

“Your face is unprofessional, and you’d have to hire me first,” Bev shakes his arm. “Come on! I missed seven years of juicy hot messes in your life, the _least_ you could do for me—”

Richie flinches, tearing his arm away from Bev like the touch burned him, her voice cutting off abruptly. He curses at his own reaction _too telling_ — laughs through the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him, hoping he doesn't look as bad as he feels.

"No messes on my end, Ringwald," his voice doesn't waver, and he's glad for the small blessing, "I went there, left the flowers an' his mug, he apologised and I secured ma's favorite client's continued presence. Sorry to disappoint ya!"

He has the decency to feel bad about keeping this from her, from all of them, really. The time he spent away is a void in conversation he doesn't touch, lest he be pulled into the black hole of his memories until there's barely anything left of him to put back together. There hardly _is_ , as it stands now, and that's another topic they've all grown pretty used to skirting around in the two weeks since he came back.

At least with the shop he has something to think about, something to _do_ to keep that all at bay.

Bev follows him to the back, grumbling quiet and good-humoured, and Richie doesn't wonder how much of that is for his sake. In fact, he seldom thinks about anything other than the dwindling delivery list and the other, less rapidly completed one he'd made for himself to keep track of his progress in taking over the shop.

If Bev touches his arm after they're done and the touch lingers a little too much, if Stan fixes him with an all too knowing look from the driver's seat of their truck, well. They're not talking about it, are they?

* * *

At nine in the morning sharp on Tuesday, Eddie walks to _What in Carnation_ and stops at the door.

It’s open, and it's empty.

Chronically understaffed as the shop was, Maggie would too leave the shop unwatched and unlocked because this is as nice a neighborhood as you can feasibly go as a small business. He had, eventually, worked out an agreement with her — after she'd found him standing by the windows "like a lost puppy" one too many mornings — that he could let himself in and at home even if she was out back doing… whatever florists do in storage.

He'd never asked, she'd never offered the information. That was fine by him.

Regardless, the point stands: he had that agreement with Maggie; nothing says that he does with _Richie_. Anxiety roots Eddie to the asphalt, awkwardly standing still with his mug and his coffee and itching hands because he hasn't drawn anything that wasn't for work and he is most definitely going stir crazy with it.

Torn between shouldering inside as he would have at any point in the past year at least, and waiting on the door like an insane person, he ends up standing there for God knows how long, only shaken out of his anxiety-induced reverie by a hand on his shoulder. And, like the very well-adjusted man Eddie is, he jumps and nearly throws himself face-first into the shop’s glass pane.

Behind him, someone laughs.

Eddie turns on his heels cartoonishly fast, coffee sloshing loudly in his mug.

The woman looks apologetic as much as she looks amused, hiding her startled laugh behind a hand. Eddie’s eyes are immediately drawn to the dark lines down her wrists, a tangle of black tree branches with fat little red birds perched on them peeking out from the sleeves of her shirt, then snaps back to her face.

She smiles, waving her hand in front of her mouth as she tries to quell her laughter. "Sorry!"

Eddie shuffles, like that would erase the fact he had just jumped a foot in the air like a startled cat because a stranger touched him. The fact he hasn’t ran away immediately after settling back on his heels speaks lengths to how much he craves going back to his former routine. As it stands now, he’s just warily staring at the woman, waiting for her to say whatever the hell it was that prompted her to interrupt his mild meltdown in the first place so he could go back to it as soon as possible.

She, instead of getting to the point, extends a hand towards Eddie. “Hi, I’m Patty.”

He stares at it. The stark black lines down her wrist are clean, precise. He can spot the details on the branches, the careful use of negative space on the thicker trunk, dark skin peeking through. Eddie blinks, recognition slowly dawning on him, and he looks away again before he catches a glimpse of anything _underneath_ those carefully drawn black lines.

“Eddie,” he offers, making a vague motion with his hands to indicate that they’re both occupied.

“I know,” Patty chuckles, crossing her arms. “I’ve been to your shop before.”

He nods jerkily, doesn’t motion towards her tattoo, and doesn’t really want to ask, but small talk is the bane of his existence and unless the ground opens up to eat him, he’s stuck going through this on autopilot. “Bill’s?”

Patty considers him, for a moment. He wonders if there was too much give on his tone, for the time it takes her to respond. Then, carefully, “not mine.”

Eddie breathes out, shifts from one foot to the other again. While he considers how to follow that up, Patty takes pity on him and continues going, the sudden somberness of her tone gone.

“I saw that you were just… standing out here. Are you going to go in?” She walks past Eddie, pushing the door open. The little bell atop of it rings faintly. “The owner is in there for sure, if that’s what you were worried about.”

 _It wasn’t_ , Eddie kind of wants to say. _I didn’t know if I was allowed_ , the words crowd on the edge of his tongue, to be swallowed down as all the others like them, like bitter pills. “I was just checking,” he says instead, feeling both comforted by her presence and disquieted enough with the very real possibility of being seen as a creep if he didn’t go inside with Patty, Eddie follows.

Immediately, he’s hit with the same sense of deep comfort that had permeated the brief moment yesterday before Richie stepped out of the back door. Eddie breathes in, shoulders dropping minutely. Patty looks at him just once, over her shoulder, and they make the same way through the shop.

When they reach the counter, Patty seems to spare no thought about going around it to disappear through the back door. Eddie watches, quizzical, but decides that after the _mess_ of yesterday, that’s none of his business. He spots his stool placed in its old spot on the other side of the counter, crammed between the closed side and a wall of evergreens, as promised, and seats himself there with a sigh, contented.

It’s all too easy to ignore the recent changes, the past weeks really, as Eddie opens his sketchbook on his lap. Eyes flickering between the blank page and the myriad of subjects around him, the constant, roaring noise inside his head quieting down to a whisper.

Eddie had missed this — the headspace he fell into so easily here, nothing in his mind but the muted sound of graphite on paper, the distant sounds of conversations happening which he doesn’t need to reply to. The only other place he’s ever found it was at the studio, but even then it was a different kind of focus, truer, maybe. He feels looser here. His attention lands on the same lavender roses he’d seen before, tracing their rounded outlines with wide motions, humming to himself.

He’s about a quarter of the way through shading the cluster of roses when the door to the back opens. Eddie, normally, wouldn’t look up — Maggie is definitely used to seeing him absorbed by his work — but he _has_ to when the person walking out shouts: “You came!”

And really, Eddie doesn’t use the word _shout_ lightly. He cringes visibly, peeking over his shoulder to cross eyes with Richie, who by now has crossed the small distance to prop himself on both elbows on the counter and lean forwards, a wide smile on his face.

That’s way too much enthusiasm, Eddie thinks, for a man whose only interactions with him so far had been… what they had. Anxiety nibbles at the back of his neck, and before he can think better about it he snaps:

“Of course I did,” _too angry, too angry, why can’t you talk like a regular human person?_ Desperately, Eddie clutches his mechanical pencil to the point where the plastic clip creaks under his thumb. “You put my chair out,” he aims for thankfulness, misses, and lands somewhere in the vicinity of vague annoyance.

For a second, Richie just blinks owlishly at him, and Eddie freezes. He is sure that he’s about to be thrown out — the man had forgiven him once already, he was under no obligation to do so again, not when Eddie apparently can’t stop himself from being so fucking rude.

Eddie is fifteen minutes and a police call deep into an entire conversation in his head when, rudely ignoring the imaginary script, Richie slaps a hand down on the counter and starts laughing. Eddie frowns, then feels conflicted about that and tries to smooth his expression over, _then_ gets annoyed all over because Richie won’t _stop_ laughing, frowns again.

“What’s so funny, man?”

Richie snorts, pushing his glasses up to rub a hand over his eye. “Fuck, dude. You’re kinda feral, aren’t you?”

Eddie goes through so many emotions in such a short span of time that it leaves him with whiplash and an even looser control of his mouth. “I’m not _feral_ ,” he all but shouts back, which kind of defeats his own defence. “What the _fuck_ , is this how you plan on talking with all your customers? I should call Maggie with a complaint before you sink her shop.”

Richie’s smile widens, the corners of his eyes shining with tears. “Are you gonna tell on me to my _mom_ , Eds? Am I back in fifth grade or something?”

“That’s not my name,” Eddie twists in the stool to turn fully towards Richie, too baffled to be properly pissed off. “Did you ever leave it, asshole?”

“Eds gets off a good one!” Richie proclaims loudly, like it’s an accomplishment, breaking out in honest-to-God _giggles_ at the end. Eddie kind of wants to jam his pencil into Richie’s hand, but the conclusion he comes to is that he’d most likely laugh it off, too. “Oh, man. Fucking feral, Bev’s gonna love you.”

“My name is _Eddie_ ,” he stabs the air between them with the pen instead, aware that he's unreasonably worked up. “It’s already a nickname, what the hell are you shortening it even more for?”

"Because," Richie shifts, braced on his forearms and leaning in far enough that Eddie could, with little effort, reach out and flick his glasses off if he wanted to, "it's cute. _You're_ cute."

Eddie pauses. "Excuse me?"

He's sure Richie's smile falters, for a second, something like a shadow passing over his eyes. As soon as Eddie notices it, though, it's gone. Richie opens his mouth to say something, but the door to the back swings open with a loud _thud_ where it hits the wall. A brown-haired man walks out, with thick elbow-high gloves pulled over, bizarrely, a suit jacket, and a wicker basket overflowing with fresh flowers in his arms.

The man looks between Eddie and Richie, grimacing.

"Rich, you have _seven_ deliveries to finish," he says, marching forward to shove the basket into Richie's arms the moment he turns around. "Stop antagonising the clientele."

The flowers obscure most of Richie's face, and do nothing to muffle his laugh. "He's not 'clientele'," he jerks his head towards Eddie, "Mags said he never buys shit."

The man sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. "Can you — can you just go get finished? Patty and I can't sit around here waiting all day."

Richie hauls the basket higher, over one shoulder, freeing a hand to salute him. "I'm going, I'm going," but he doesn't move from his spot. Instead, he points at Eddie, then back at the stranger. "By the way, Stan, this is Eds —"

“ _Eddie_.”

"— be nice to 'im, he's Ma's favorite regular vagrant. Eddie," their eyes meet, around the mass of flowers, and Richie says very deliberately: "this is Staniel. Be nice to them while I'm gone."

Eddie blinks, takes note. "I am perfectly nice, asshole."

Richie does turn on his heels then, chuckling. "Sure, I believe you. You little rabid pomeranian of a man."

Eddie debates whether it would prove Richie's point or not if he jumped over the counter to hit him over the head with his sketchbook, when Stan peels off one of their gloves and smacks Richie on the shoulder with it.

"Stop flirting and get going," Stan smacks at him again.

Richie chokes on a gasp, like he's — offended, maybe? Eddie doesn't have enough time to process that thought (and, frankly, he doesn't want to) because with a speed that a guy this size absolutely shouldn't have, Richie bolts for the door and disappears.

Stan finishes taking off their gloves, folds both of them neatly and, while stashing them one-handed beneath the counter, extends a hand across the top.

“Eddie, right?”

The sleeve of their suit rides up, a little. Enough for Eddie to see the line of black ink on their wrist, the pattern of negative space in what kind of looks like the roots of a tree. Eddie’s eyes snap back up as soon as he makes the connection, chest aching, and he takes Stan’s hand.

“Yeah, Stan?"

Stan hums. “Nice to meet you. I’d apologise for his behavior, but I think you were handling yourself,” they retreat, walking over to the cash register.

“Nice to meet you too,” Eddie scratches at his shoulder, clears his throat. “Is — is he always like this?”

“Oh, absolutely. You get used to it,” Stan pulls out a scrap of fabric from underneath the register, examining it over the rim of his thin glasses. “Or you can tell him to back off, he usually listens.”

Eddie nods, unsure of how to answer. Stan doesn’t follow that up with anything, either — just grabs a bottle of alcohol from somewhere under the counter, and begins wiping it clean. Eddie stays turned towards them for a while, waiting to see if they’re going to keep making small talk but it just… doesn’t happen. Stan stays quiet, and it… doesn’t feel judgemental. Not like most abruptly finished conversations do, in his experience, with the other person being forced into cutting it short because Eddie’s brain refuses to maintain his side of it.

It feels like Stan said what they wanted to say, and that’s fine. No further input required.

Eddie considers this for a moment, then turns back to his neglected sketchbook. They coexist in a companionable silence, and it’s… nice. He can hear Stan shuffling about behind him, taking a phone call at one point, greeting the odd early-morning customer, and it almost reminds Eddie of how it used to be with Maggie at the helm.

He has one page of his sketchbook filled by the time Richie emerges from the back room again, balancing a small vase on the crook of his elbow.

"Patty's got everything loaded up," he slaps a hand on Stan's shoulder, voice smashing through the quiet with all the grace of a sledgehammer. "How's the movement?"

"Slow," Stan doesn't shrug Richie's hand off. They lean back into it a little, looking at Richie above the rim of their glasses. "Have you thought about what Bev said?"

There's something in the way Richie looks at them, on the set of his shoulders when he shrugs, that makes Eddie feel like he's intruding on an old conversation. "'m thinking about it."

"It's _literally_ the one thing you studied to do, man," Stan sighs. "What more there is to think about? You're good at photography, and it's inevitably going to get the shop more clients."

Richie chuckles, but it's… different, somehow. Drier. Eddie looks away, and seriously considers packing up and leaving. He's just about done — a cursory look at his wristwatch tells him he'd only have another half an hour free anyway. No great losses. When he looks back up, the two of them are locked in what seems to be a staring match, Richie’s smile entirely gone.

That’s enough to make up his mind.

Eddie tucks his pencil between the pages he filled, and tried to leave as quietly as possible.

He promptly bumps into the counter because he also tries to leave as _fast_ as possible, the vase Richie had placed just behind him teetering perilously close to tumbling off to the ground. Eddie flails, nearly chucking his sketchbook across the room in his rush to steady it. The vase doesn’t break (thank fuck), but it does shatter any illusion Eddie had of just leaving without notice because Richie’s eyes snap to him immediately.

He steps towards Eddie, grabbing at the ceramic just above his hands, and smiles again. “Gonna go breaking the merchandise again, dude? I know it’s a flower shop, but I’ve only got so many vases.”

Eddie tears his hands away as if he’s been burnt.

Behind Richie, Stan sighs. “Rich...”

“ _Stan_ ,” Richie rolls his eyes, still looking at Eddie. “Patty’s waiting, and I gotta make sure this little wrecker doesn’t destroy my shop.”

“No,” Eddie says in a rush. Whatever their conversation was, is, he _does not_ want to be the reason why it ends. He doesn’t think he can handle coming back here if he were. “I’m leaving anyway. I’m— I need to get to work.”

Richie’s face does _something_ , but Eddie wasn’t looking close enough to catch whatever it was.

“I guess you can come out back with me, then,” Stan says in a perfect monotone. “I’ll go check on Patty. Have a nice day, Eddie.”

The door clicks quietly behind them, presumably. Eddie still isn’t looking, eyes focused on the swirly patterns on the ceramic vase between himself and Richie. Richie, on his part, is staring a hole through the top of Eddie’s head.

Silence settles. It’s tense — it begs for something, someone to fill it. Eddie’s skin crawls with the knowledge, mouth drying fast because he has no idea what to say but he can’t stay in whatever terse bubble has formed out of a half-discussion he doesn’t understand but he can’t just _leave_ without being just about the rudest he’s been in the short two _fucking_ days since he’s made acquaintances with Richie but he thinks he might just pass out, probably, if he stands here waiting for the other man to break the silence.

Eventually, Richie taps his fist on the counter, slides the swirling, colorful vase closer to Eddie. “These are for you.”

Richie’s voice still has that strained, terse quality to it, and it would surely make Eddie bristle if he weren’t so confused. His gaze lifts from the patterns on the ceramic to the flowers, frowning at them — round, fat, oddly green flowers that look a little bit like succulents but without any of the rubbery texture when he chances touching a finger to the edge of one. They spill out of their vase, framed by darker green leaves, rough on the back of Eddie’s hand when he lowers it.

“What?” Eddie thinks about the white tulips in his living room, pale and still perfect, faintly about allergies he doesn’t have but that only the placebo effect of thinking he might often was enough to send him spiralling.

“For you,” Richie repeats, pushing the vase further. Eddie has to juggle with his sketchbook to grab it before it falls right off the edge. Richie shrugs. His smile is wrong. “In case you ain’t coming back over.”

Eddie doesn’t know to respond to that, so he doesn’t. Richie hums and turns around, walking away. He’s halfway through the backdoor when he speaks again, tapping at the wooden frame.

“I’m gonna keep your chair here’n all. If you do,” tight, strained still.

Eddie swallows dryly, fingers going white around the vase. “Uh, thanks. See you tomorrow.”

Richie nods, “yeah. Dunno if I’m gonna be at the front, feel free to come in anyway,” and closes the door behind him.

Eddie stares at the door for a moment, then bolts for the street.

* * *

At night, in his shoebox of an apartment, Richie lets himself think. Just a little, not entirely on purpose.

He tugs the window in his bedroom open, sits on the windowsill with one leg hanging off, the other firmly planted on his secondhand mattress — he looks out, relishing in the view, the _feeling_ of being almost suspended high up in the air in his seventh floor apartment —, and carefully cradles a hand against the wind to lights up a cigarette.

Richie watches the smoke curling up, off the cherry-red tip of his cigarette, to be blown off by the night breeze. Illuminated by the lonely lamp at his bedside table, if you could call a wooden crate propped up on its side a 'table', he finds himself thinking about _lenses_ and _angles_ and _lighting_ , and he yearns so much for a passion he doesn't have anymore, to the point where he feels it like an ache on his teeth.

His camera, that he hasn't touched in months, is just there, tucked in the crate by his bed, propping up a stack of books on _film history_ and _theory_ he hasn't touched in years, offhandedly wondering when exactly in the last years it was that LA chewed him up and robbed him of his drive.

( _Around two years in,_ a voice that sounds eerily like him but not-quite says, _you know when. You know why._ )

His body convulses around itself, around the dark pit of wanting and anxiety, lungs burning with the sharp drag he takes, blowing the words away in the next exhale. He's not thinking about it.

( _"Put that away," a hand would shove at him, nearly knocking the camera out of his hands, the laughter more annoyed than anything else._

_"When you're famous, someone's gonna pay for this, man," Richie would say, mostly unfazed, readjusting the focus. "A doc-fic about the life of — when he was just a nobody."_

_"Gonna make it big off of my coat tails, Tozier?" And if he heard the poison laced beneath those at the time he didn’t care. He drank it, vial and all. “I ought to kick you out.”_ )

Richie flicks the half-smoked cig out of the window, refusing to think about the external HD he couldn't bring a hammer down to without losing nearly ten years of backups and images he can't bear to part with but can’t stand to look at, or the tiny box tucked away with the last SD cards he hasn't found the time or the drive to format. He puts his feet more firmly down on the bed, stretches out to tug his phone from its charger on the pillow.

His thumb hovers over Stan’s contact image.

He calls Bev instead.

“D’ya wanna come over to the lake this weekend?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this did not take me four months to write, I was just having a bunch of second thoughts about how I write them. The next one probably won't take as long?? Hopefully??? Check back on in March?????? I guess?????? Follow me on twitter @etherdragons_ to see wtf I am doing instead of this if you feel like it


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